This Be the Verse

the last line and by extension entire poem spoken by cowboy movie heel as he fires his pistol into the dirt at some poor young lad's feet

lost me at "not an ape"

and the idea that such a speciesist poem would be used for a first contact

I cannot settle which is worse,
The Anti-Novel or Adrian Fucking Mitchell

Pshaw! Millions of people like posters of cats with modestly amusing captions, such as "Hang In There!", too. Someone must supply them with ever new and transparently cheesy gewgaws and Adrian Mitchell is just the person to do it, proudly, sincerely and without shame. Let us leave them to themselves, fondly holding hands, their mouths stained pink by cotton candy.

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Great thread everyone

In a National Poetry Day poll in 2005 his poem "Human Beings" was voted the one most people would like to see launched into space.

Out of a cannon into the sun?

Hoos what’d you vote for

Uhh I think the second line because it leaves space for people to mean well despite forces at play that can ultimately be more powerful than they are

^vmic

Which is a good thing

Haha truly

feeling “Man hands on misery to man” at the moment. otherwise “coastal shelf” - that way it conveys a dread sense, which surrounds the heart, of an accumulation of irretrievable cold and darkness over time - rather than progress or even not-progress, the perpetuation of the human race being an act that ploughs is further into sadness as a collective being of isolated individuals, that retains and adds to our fucked upness (our solitude, our anger, our failures of tolerance and kindness etc).

this is the picture of someone awake with fear at night, assessing their own mortality and childlessness, rather than a truth, i think. or rather it sums up that feeling truly than necessarily expressing a “true” sentiment (otherwise no “Sidney Bechet” - “oh play that thing!” - or “First Sight” - “Earth’s immeasurable surprise” - that “immeasurable” a counterweight to the endless “deepening” here)

I

Look it's a very good thread and poetry and interpretation etc

But coastal shelf as a line stands out for me as the one put in

Because it rhymed with what he wanted the last line to be

i read george herbert’s poem Miserie recently and turned back to it after that post, to see whether there was any useful gloss for Larkin’s use. Not really, tho it is really good:

Man is but grass
He knows it, fill the glasse

and

Oh foolish man! where are thine eyes?
How hast thou lost them in a crowd of cares?Thou pull’st the rug, and wilt not rise,
No not to purchase the whole pack of starres

(pull’st the rug = drag the quilt over yourself in the morning)

it was in the poem above tho - Decay - that i found a sort of parallel to This Be The Verse:

I see the world grows old, when as the heat
Of thy great love once spread, as in an urn
Doth closet up it self, and still retreat,
Cold sinne still forcing it...


i’ll break off there for the moment. this is, as with larkin’s coastal shelf, progressive, irrevocable loss, coldness and decay. it progresses through history, in herbert’s case away from the starting fire of God’s love, in Larkin’s through an accumulation of corruption (from an implied point of innocence, then).

what larkin cannot have is millenarian redemption - to continue the herbert verse:

Cold sinne still forcing it, till it return,
And calling Justice, all things burn.

the apocalyptic fire renews the heat forever. for larkin there is no such moment.

what larkin calls “misery” herbert wd call sin. and it occurs to me in a way that is now obvious and will have been pointed out before that much of what larkin wrote is a reaching into godlessness from with a religious framework, of poetry, of language and of society and an inherited state of mind. there is no wheel or couplet or fire to redeem his coastal shelf.

that inherited state of mind, from which you can’t escape, which traps you in its religion even when you do not believe, is how your parents and your parents’ generation fuck you up.

xpost

yeah but sometimes the process that drives you to choose the word doesn't mean it's not the right word

Xp

i think that happy conjunction of meaning, fit and sound is why it’s good! deepens like a coastal shelf works as a stand-alone image for me ymmv / de gustibus

wot NV said. the constraints of poetry produce these moments.

Ya it's acknowledged as a personal thing

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Strong showing for the last verse, 4 of the top 5.

Also I have much love for some parents, but lol at the other line in the top five being "but not me, right, guys?"

Think the votes for "They may not mean to, but they do." was based on double-meaning, as discussed upthread

Yeah it's very much a line that can be read as apology or condemnation or just a shrug all of which came up itt

The Verse This Be

It deepens like a coastal shelf.
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Man hands on misery to man.
They may not mean to, but they do.

Get out as early as you can,
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
Who half the time were soppy-stern
By fools in old-style hats and coats,

But they were fucked up in their turn
And add some extra, just for you.
They fill you with the faults they had
And half at one another’s throats.

hahah sick

Excellent

ha wrote itself rly

A good idea need only be done half-well

nice

Kudos

We should poll more poems and do the same.